Word: afghanistanism
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...White House says it understands that the solution to the war in Afghanistan is not purely military. Officials have declared a concomitant "civilian surge" of experts to bolster the embattled country's bureaucracy and economy along with the greater number of troops. But if the U.S. is truly committed to long-term security and stability in Afghanistan, it should be investing in the one pivotal sector that has received scant attention from the international community: education...
...they can be found, often have a reading level only a few years beyond that of their students. That's not enough to build a functioning economy, a civil sector or a stable government, let alone an army capable of fighting an insurgency. (See pictures of U.S. troops in Afghanistan...
...army's ability to fight depends on the quality of its logistics planning," an American soldier in Afghanistan recently told me. In the U.S. it can be taken for granted that the lowest grunt has basic reading, writing and computing skills. Not so in Afghanistan, where many of the desperately poor enlistees sign up with a fingerprint or the equivalent of a scrawled X. Yet the Obama strategy for Afghanistan envisions an indigenous military that will soon be able to take over security from its American and international mentors. How can a largely illiterate army plan the complex logistics that...
...perceived to be free of the corruption and nepotism that plague the central government in Kabul. Yet it would be a mistake to focus on the military to the detriment of developing the civil and governance sectors, even if a robust army suits the U.S.'s immediate goals in Afghanistan. One need only look across the border to Pakistan, where 60 years of weak civilian governance interspersed with frequent military coups have created a nation perpetually in crisis and a haven for global terrorism. One of the best ways to encourage a strong and stable civil society is through education...
...problem with using development funds for education is that results are difficult to quantify over short periods of time. Even with a state-of-the-art teacher-training college, something desperately needed in Afghanistan, it would take at least four years to see qualified instructors placed in rural schools. But there is another way to spend money on education that is quantifiable, sustainable and quickly effective. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union provided thousands of university scholarships annually to Afghan students. The only condition - set by the Afghan government - was that each of those students return to Afghanistan immediately upon...